Niall O’Donoghue grew up in a rich country. He got an architecture degree, a top-paying job with a pay raise every year and a bonus at Christmas.
O’Donoghue and his wife bought a house in the city and another in the country. They have two cars, two mortgages and two children under age 2. Then a month ago, O’Donoghue, 33, was laid off, jobless for the first time in his life, another well-dressed victim of one of the world’s fastest and deepest economic reversals.
“It’s a bit of a shock to the system, especially for my generation,” O’Donoghue said one recent morning, waiting in the cold with dozens of other people in line outside the Limerick unemployment office. “I don’t think things will ever be as good as they were in the last five, six or seven years. That’s the bitter truth of it.”
Young Irish people accustomed to economic boom times have suddenly found themselves living a bleak page out of Irish history. Many in their 20s and 30s — a generation raised on the assumption of jobs and prosperity at home — have had their expectations crushed by the global economic crisis.
